Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Early in Sunday’s dumpster fire of a loss to the lowly
Oakland Raiders, it was hard to recognize the Cleveland Browns.Oh the play on the field was very familiar.That hasn’t changed.What was out of whack was more visual and
took more than a few seconds to pinpoint.But there it was.Stride for
stride with every bad play was a team doing so in the ugliest uniforms in the
entire league.

There is nothing at all to recommend what the Browns now
look like to the viewing public except in a Value Jet kind of way.If the purpose of those uniforms is to
distract the fans into thinking they’re actually rooting for a whole different
franchise then, but only then, will the new uniforms be a success. Otherwise in
practice it was the usual way the Browns do things, poorly and without much
thought.

But why harp on what surely is the least of this team’s
problems?The Browns have played 3
league doormats in 3 consecutive weeks.They’ve only been competitive once.There are plenty of conclusions to drawn without having to sort through
the visual mess as well.

The other thing that struck as I watched the crawler on the
screen displaying scores from other games was the performance of Tyrod Taylor of the Buffalo Bills had against
another of the league’s many, many doormats, the Miami Dolphins.It’s not that just that Taylor played well or
that he played better Sunday (and all season) than anyone on the Browns’ roster
It’s just that it’s hard to imagine a scenario wheere anyone in this Browns’
organization would have had any sense to even give Taylor the kind of shot he’s
getting in Buffalo.

This really is the essence of what plagues the Browns and it’s
the same as it’s been for years. The barest of strategies, the poorest of
execution. Shoddy, clueless owners who choose incompetent “football men” to run
what’s turned out to be the same old same old with the same old same old
players expecting a different result and complaining that it’s just a matter of
execution when the result is what it’s always been.

Entering the season the Browns had aging journeyman Josh
McCown and the league’s biggest question mark, Johnny Manziel at quarterback.Just as the Bills added Taylor for depth, the
Browns could have done likewise but stood pat instead.Taylor may have reached his peak and could
regress.The point though is that the
Browns don’t think like other teams and that’s always to their disadvantage.

Let’s assume owner Jimmy Haslam is sincere and driven to
bring a prideful, winning franchise to the shores of Lake Erie.He sure has a funny way of showing it.We all understand how he ended up with Mike
Pettine as his head coach.By the time
his front office got done fiddling around with the longest search in NFL head
coach search history, Pettine was essentially the only available candidate left
and he was barely a candidate at that.The more credible, the more qualified had long since found more stable
environments and at this point even Syria is a more stable environment.

What is more difficult to understand is why Haslam has any remaining
faith in Ray Farmer, the general manager he seems to trust all evidence to the
contrary notwithstanding.It’s hard to
imagine that Farmer, the guy who brought you, in no particular order, Josh
McCown, Justin Gilbert, Johnny Manziel and the relatively expensive Dwayne
Bowe, would remain employed by any other franchise.Farmer literally has no track record of accomplishment
and nothing he’s done in Cleveland has built his resume except in the most
negative ways possible. He has no eye for talent and, more devastating, no
understanding of how to construct a roster.I wouldn’t spot him $200 on Draft Kings to run my fantasy team let alone
run an actual team.

Sunday’s loss was like the opening day loss and completely illustrative
of Farmer’s and Pettine’s shortcomings.Let’s
start with Pettine’s role first.

The team was once again an undisciplined mess and
irrespective of the talent level there’s no excuse when it comes to either
discipline or effort.Completely
misreading the vibe of his team, Pettine claimed that McCown gave the Browns
the best chance to win on Sunday despite the fact that Manziel actually led the
team to a victory, it’s only victory, the week before.The offense seemed hungover by that decision
and responded with a performance so reminiscent of week one it was as if you
CBS was merely playing that week one tape.

Silly penalties, out of position players, bad blocking,
worse tackling, awful coverage, momentum-killing special teams, this game had
it all.And more!Pettine is trying to instill a tough-minded,
old school attitude in a team that plays like the point of professional
football is to have fun and not get hurt.His teams consistently commit one silly penalty after another.They often look lost and unmotivated.Perhaps the worst indictment is that they
play as if pride isn’t part of the equation.In short, all the things that fall on the coaching staff went awry,
every single one of them.If you can
tell me exactly what the game plan for the Browns was on either side of the
ball, email me, enlighten me, defend Pettine.I can’t.

But let’s also remember that Pettine is playing with a
roster built by Farmer.There, I’ve
defended him.That still is no excuse
for all the mental mistakes but it does in large measure explain the lack of
fundamental skills available to Pettine for executing his vision.

Pettine told the media that the theme of this year’s team is
to put words into action, to not just talk about being the best this or the
best that but go out and actually show it.In truth, this team does not have the talent to be the best at anything
except talking and that’s on Farmer, so let’s focus on him.

The offensive line, supposedly one of the best in the
league, just ask them, was going to be even better this season with the return
of center Alex Mack from injury.It isn’t,
proving only that Mack really wasn’t the lynchpin he appeared to be when he
first got hurt.Because so many on the
line get beat by the defensive line it holds constantly.It false starts even more often.It hasn’t opened a legitimate hole for a running
back since Gene Hickerson played and it hasn’t adequately protected a
quarterback since, well, Gene Hickerson played.

Farmer supposedly built this team to be run-centric in order
to minimize the constant shortcomings he and every general manager before him
has in finding a competent quarterback.Putting aside the incongruity of building a run-centric team in a pass
happy league, if you’re going to be run oriented then you need a line that can
block for a player that can run. The Browns have neither which is why almost
any lead an opponent gets is safe.

On defense the Browns can’t stop anyone doing anything.They are dead last in the run, again.The defensive backfield is a mess, as
usual.Joe Haden continues to be the
most overrated corner in the league and whoever is second is a distant
second.Haden seems to have cultivated
his reputation on the backs of the kind of receivers that generally suit up for
the Browns—slow, small, possession-type receivers.Put a legitimate big-time receiver on him,
say Brandon Marshall or Amari Cooper, and he turns into Buster Skrine.You can’t be a great cover corner if you can’t
cover the league’s better receivers.We
can talk about Justin Gilbert, number 1 pick Justin Gilbert, not contributing
at all but those mounds of dirt have been turned over enough.Farmer lays at the root of every roster
problem on this team and right now it’s hard to see a path to 5 wins, let alone
to 9.

The Browns put together a good game the previous week.In many ways it was the polar opposite of the
week before.But just one week later it’s
as if the win against Tennessee didn’t take place.This team simply doesn’t progress and there’s
nothing, from the owner’s box to the front office to the coaching staff to the
roster that suggests, let alone gives any hope, that there’s progress to be
made.

But
hey, why talk about any of that.The
Browns have new uniforms and, as Carl Speckler would say, they have that going
for them, which is nice.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

If the competition was intended to measure the most
dysfunctional franchise in the NFL, the Cleveland Browns would be a perennial contender,
running neck and neck for the top of the heap with the likes of the Washington
Redskins.Unfortunately that’s pretty
much the polar opposite of the competition the Browns ostensibly should be in
which is why once again when the season ends Browns fans will be searching for
a team to root for during the playoffs.

For what it’s worth, a disclaimer.That lede was written before the disaster
that was the franchise’s 11th straight opening day loss.That loss, institutional failure as high art,
couldn’t have been more timely or prescient or point proving.

Nonetheless, let’s soldier on.And because this is Cleveland, where
notoriety is treated like success, it takes a special kind of franchise
dysfunction to beat out a team like Washington whose general manager is accused
on Twitter, by his current wife no less, of sleeping with a reporter and then
feeding her stories.Yet these are your
Cleveland Browns, a team who entered the season with someone at every level of
the franchise suspended and an owner still living under the cloud of potential
criminal activity.

Maybe it’s a close call.It doesn’t matter.It will be
another long season in Cleveland.

Let’s face, it gets no more sublime or ridiculous when you
pause to consider that the team’s best receiver, Josh Gordon, is suspended for
the season, its general manager, Ray Farmer, the team’s second in command, is
suspended for the first four games and its offensive line coach is on
indefinite suspension allegedly for domestic abuse.

That trifecta ought to remove all doubt about why this team
can’t progress on the field.It is so
busy doing stupid, petty, awful things away from the field (or, in Farmer’s
case, tangential to the field) that it doesn’t have the time to fully focus on
what really matters.

The Gordon suspension can be viewed through a variety of prisms
but the bottom line is that Gordon was adequately warned to stay away from both
drugs and alcohol and deliberately chose to act otherwise.That’s the Browns way.He claims not to be an addict, which actually
makes what he did to get himself thrown out of the league for a year appear
worse.It’s easy to feel compassion for
the addict whose initial deliberate act eventually spirals into a series of
overwhelming physical and psychological cravings as to alter the ability to
think deliberately.But I’ll take Gordon
at his word.That’s not him.He’s not an addict.That makes him just a fool.He ought to be on the cover of the team’s
media guide.Gordon is the face of the
franchise.

But Farmer is fighting Gordon for that distinction and
putting up a hell of a fight.Where
perhaps he has the edge is in age and hence perceived maturity.A Duke graduate and former linebacker with
the Eagles, Farmer should have the education and sense to know better.He probably does.Unfortunately he lacks the ability to use
either.His ego far outpaces actual
accomplishment.

I’ve never understood frankly how Farmer held on to his job
after the texting incident.It’s an
incredible embarrassment to the franchise in and of itself not to mention the
hole it puts the team in during those critical first few weeks of the season
when rosters are constantly shifting.Now the cynic may be thankful for small favors when you consider Farmer’s
abilities as a general manager.His
record is so poor on that front Tom Heckert and Phil Savage look like Ernie
Accorsi in comparison.

No reason to completely re-litigate Farmer’s real calling
card, the bizarre 4-game suspension for spending game days texting his vast
football Xs and Os knowledge to the sideline from the cheap seats.But what is worth mentioning in this whole
affair is how counterproductive his conduct really was.While Farmer was channeling the dream of
every fantasy football owner or head coach wannabe, only with the actual access
and the hierarchal structure to get people to at least look at his messages,
his antics were completely distracting to those on the field actually trying to
do their jobs.

This is exactly what it means to be dysfunctional. Farmer,
sitting in his box acting like a big shot while the coaches on the field have
to contend with filtering through his idiotic ramblings instead of
concentrating on how to actually win a game in this town. This team needs to
hit on all cylinders and he’s keeping it from hitting on any.

There may come a point where one of Farmer’s early round draft
picks or free agent acquisitions will actually work out, but that doesn’t look
to happen any time soon.He’s mostly
pitching a shut out when he ought to instead be hitting at about a .750 clip.Farmer is quickly losing the excuse of
previous administrations to justify the rancid performances like Sundays that
increasingly less fans are witnessing.There is not one area where this team is better because of him.Not one.

Then of course there’s Andy Moeller. I’d say that this is
what you get when you rely on Michigan men when running your business but I don’t
want to feed into Braylon Edwards’ narrative that Cleveland fans never gave him
a fair shake because he was from Michigan.Moeller’s failings, like Edwards’ were both on field and character
related and where each went to college is irrelevant.

Moeller has well documented issues with his ability to
handle alcohol (like Edwards, actually) and by the latest accounts that led to
his suspension, still does. Moeller’s
alleged actions, per the 911 call, are reprehensible for all the same reasons
that have been detailed countless times about countless NFL players.

The biggest problem with Moeller is that he doesn’t
learn.He hasn’t learned from his past
arrests for alcohol abuse and he hasn’t learned from all the other troubles
players and some coaches have had with domestic abuse.If head coach Mike Pettine brings Moeller
back then Pettine’s tenure needs to be further evaluated.Pettine brought this nit wit in but there’s
no reason to continue to invest in that mistake.

What makes all this so relevant is actually the play on the
field this past Sunday.A collapse in
the first game of the season at the hands of one of the worst teams in the
league last season isn’t a fluke.It’s
the byproduct of a team out of sync at every level.The team’s owner runs a hair trigger
enterprise.The front office isn’t
competent in any aspect of its job.The
head coach is still raw.The players, at
least those who have been around for years like Joe Thomas, are mostly doing
their professional best while knowing at every minute that there isn’t a chance
in hell that this team can be successful.

As for Pettine, Sunday’s fiasco only demonstrated that he
isn’t up to the task of being able to overcome all the dysfunction around
him.Pettine’s team, in game one, was an
undisciplined mess, committing one stupid, drive killing penalty after
another.And when it wasn’t doing that
it was turning the ball over.These are
issues of discipline that must start with the head coach.It’s one of the easiest things to fix, or
certainly one of the first at least.And
yet Pettine’s team came out and played like the platoon from Stripes after Sgt.
Hulka got blown up.

Let’s also not give Pettine a pass for the way the whole
Terelle Pryor mess played itself out.From this distance it looked like a palace coup initiated by Pettine
once Farmer was off on his garden leave for the month.Up until the moment he was cut Pryor was
practicing and plays were being designed around his unique talents.The excuse from Pettine was that the timing
for Pryor wasn’t right, a more or less empty sentence that likely is papering
over a schism that developed with Farmer signed Pryor in the first place.

Who knows if Pryor could ever be productive?But isn’t it the point that it’s precisely
guys like Pryor on whom moribund teams like the Browns should be taking
chances?And when ultimate journeyman
Josh McCown decided to try and helicopter himself in the end zone on the team’s
first drive on Sunday, how stupid did the Browns look by having only the shaky
Johnny Manziel as the remaining quarterback on the roster?If I’m guessing, and purely guessing, the New
England Patriots will sign Pryor because of course.That’s how good teams stay good.

Pettine may be relatively far down on the list of this team’s
problems, but he is on the list.And the
fact that he’s on the list only speaks to the level of dysfunction that is
keeping this franchise from being mediocre, let alone functional.Fixing it starts at the very top and given
what fans have seen thus far, that’s hardly the most comforting thought.